S. Samuel
While G-Dep continues to wait behind bars on a murder trial, his former Bad Boy Records labelmate Black Rob reflects on the fallen emcee and reminds fans he is still actively working while in jail.
Despite Dep’s mainstream absence over the past few years, Rob is still confident the Harlem rapper has fuel in his tank.
“People be counting him out but all jokes aside, if my man come it’s a problem. A lot of dudes are in trouble,” Rob said in an interview. “I can’t visit him cause I have felonies. I mean G-Dep is a strong individual, the strongest individual I know. I respect the man. He calls me everyday and spits something for me. If he gets another chance, I know he’s not going to f*ck it up. If he gets a second change — they gonna let him go. They can’t prove that. Back in the days, I think it was around 1999 or 2000 when my album came out, Busta Rhymes said to me, ‘You have a horseshoe in your a**,’ ’cause no matter what I did I always came back. I’m going to show them this time that I have a horseshoe again. Before you count a brother out, give him a fair chance. Especially if he has heart.” (XXL Mag)
Last February, Rob reflected on Dep’s legal situation and spoke highly of the rapper.
“I was shocked,” Black Rob said in an interview when asked about his reaction to G-Dep’s murder case. “I was shocked like everybody else. I was flawed man. I didn’t hear from Dep prior to that, man, for a couple of months. Like, we was playing phone tag. That’s my dude man. At the end of the day, I love him like a brother. This is real talk, anybody will tell you. It goes beyond music man. That’s like my little brother man. We trying to make something happen right now, especially myself. Get back on the road, put this little [album] out and be able to help him out with his legal fees and sh*t like that. You gotta remember, before anything, we got friendship my dude. And he ain’t never stab me in my back or try to come at me sideways. We always handled our sh*t like men. I want to help him out. I want to be there for him so when he do come out, he’s gonna be a problem. If he don’t have to do no 10 or 15 years, if Dep comes home in 3 to 4 years, he’s gonna be a f*cking problem man. If he wants to rap, he’s gonna crush everything in his path. And you know where he’s gonna be, with me.” (Futuristic Blogger)
Late last year, Bad Boy Records CEO Diddy spoke on Dep’s legal tribulations.
“You could always feel that if you knew G. Dep, and I can’t say it was that, maybe something was troubling his soul,” Diddy explained in an interview. “‘Cause he was real quiet. He’s the type of guy who wouldn’t hurt a fly. I don’t know what happened in that instance but he did the right thing and manned up to it…He had a real bad drug problem and that could have caused the situation. As a person, that wasn’t nothing that he would do. Drugs sometimes make people slip up and make mistakes…Dep was definitely one of the favorite artists I signed to Bad Boy. That’s something I really wanted to work out, but that was just like he had personal things he was dealing with and we tried our best with that.” (Shade 45)
Last December, Dep admitted to being the shooter behind a 1993 murder.
Apparently when Trevell Coleman, AKA rapper G-Dep, came clean to police about shooting a man in the chest in 1993, he may not have known that he was confessing to killing a guy. He told the Post in a jailhouse interview, “I was surprised — for some reason, I really didn’t think that he died. When they told me, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m not going home after this.'” He has now been charged with murder, and faces life in prison. Coleman says he didn’t think much of the shooting at the time, but “started to wonder if all the bad things that happened to me in my life were karma for what I did…I thought that if I turned myself in, it might give me closure.” So despite the objections of his mother and his girlfriend, he told the police. Now he says, “The only thing I regret is that I have to leave my kids.” (Gothamist)
Check out some past footage of G-Dep down below:
